Gamma Susie's This n That

Thursday, January 11, 2018

I had the wonderful opportunity to make my daughter's wedding cake. She is a Hodgkin's Lymphoma cancer survivor and to have a wedding instead of a funeral on December 24, 2017 is a miracle. God saw this journey through and we had a wonderful celebration of life!

Jonathan and Casey wanted a rustic cake, kind of the thing right now. I made a three tiered caked with the bottom being chocolate with chocolate ganache filling, the middle was butter cake with chocolate icing filling, and the top was lemon with lemon curd filling. The frosting is butter cream.

I put real roses on the cake as requested and topped it with a Willow Tree cake topper. Each layer was delicious and it cut well. I'm always worried about it getting crumbly with just butter cream frosting as it tends to suck out the moisture. However, this time I sprayed each layer with simple syrup to avoid drying out.

It was an Irish theme wedding, but they incorporated both of their likes. It was beautiful.

Monday, July 10, 2017

I was asked to make cupcakes for the La Puente staff appreciation dinner. As it is summer I chose to do flowers and make a garden. It's always fun to get creative. I like how the roses and the hydrangeas turned out best. The daisy's are okay but I will do something different next time.

I wish I had a proper picture that displayed these. They were set up on terra cotta pots with ribbons and bows tied on each pot. It was pretty cute.

Monday, May 8, 2017

My little friend, Audrina, got a surprise when I came out with this beauty. This unicorn cake was fun to make and not hard at all.

I watched several You Tube videos on decorating with multiple colors in a pastry bag to get the affect on unicorn mane. The cake is a chocolate cake with chocolate ganache filling and covered with white fondant. The ears and horn are made out of gum paste and the center of the ears are painted with gold luster dust and gold sprinkles. I hand painted on the eyes.

My 3 year old granddaughter turned three this past week. She loves animals so I made her a puppy cake.

I did a variation of the puppy tutorial I found on You Tube. It wasn't hard and she loved it. The cake is a Duncan Hines Strawberry cake and I used strawberry jam in the middle. It was pretty tasty and there was none left when the party was over which is the way I like it!

I covered the cake with a butter cream crumb coat and white fondant. I spray painted the pink around the bottom of the cake and on the number 3. When we served the cake I put strawberries around the base to coincide with the flavor.

I also made some cupcakes using silicone flower pot baking cups. I made them to match the cake.

When we started to sing Happy Birthday I guess it was too loud for Lizzy. She did enjoy the cake.

Three of my grandchildren have their birthdays in the first week of march. This year instead of making one cake for all of them I made three different cakes. Davy asked for a bug cake. This is a surprise cake with candy and toy bugs inside that fall out when you cut the cake open.

I used Crispx cereal and crunched it up. I used this to make the "dirt" for the ant hill.

Because this is a surprise cake I cut a hole in the center of each layer and set aside the circles. I used a large biscuit cutter. I placed butter cream between each layer but I didn't coat the inside

of the circle because the candy will stick to the walls and not fall out nicely when the cake is sliced.

When I filled the center I used about one of the cutouts to plug the hole and then crumb coated the whole cake and chilled it for 30 minutes before covering with fondant and decorating.

I made the fat ants and the log from fondant. With the remainder of the cake holes I formed a "hill" on top and covered it with butter cream and sprinkled with the "dirt".

The grand kids love the "toys" on the cake and it was pretty easy to find plastic bugs at Wal Mart.